Wednesday, May 21, 2008

lush/dreamy dream within a dream

Today was the release date of the long awaited (by me) Audio recording effort by young femme fatale Scarlett Johansson,which is even more fetching as she is trying stuff by brilliant wiseguy Tom Waits. Like when her fellow too-compelling actress/enchantress/chanteuse Charlotte Gainsbourg tried "Five fifty five".. For me..I ache for it's blandness/
I so expected it's grandness.
Maybe it's because I've been listening to a lotta edgy Polly Jean Harvey &
Dresden Dolls lately but the lush & dreamy sound that Scarlett's producer was going for(Mr. Waits is truly a wistful romantic and lush is appropriate,but) was way short of what studio lush-legends Mr. Brian Wilson or Jon Brion might have succeeded at.
Maybe if producer/hero Todd Rundgren had been saddled w/the studio chores, and Scarlett chose from Mr. Rundgren's vast cache of gems to interpret, all mighta been AOK. Imagine her lushing w/ "It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference","Wailing Wall","Torch Song", or "The Night
The Carousel Burned Down" complete with all those gorgeously hishy glockenspiels & tubular bells & shit.
God, Todd could even keep Bowie for the cameo backups again,if he likes.

& mix it with a kiss & a part clenched fist
can you picture this?

Friday, May 16, 2008

mixed media memorium .Bob Rauschenberg May 12,2008

From Cunningham and Cage
to the last, less dramatic stage
You found
& let broken art be broken art.
You sequestered, sequenced, &
segued.
You corralled,
Caught,
& catalogued
odd blends.

yr. now taskless assistants
yr. staff of stuff scavengers
must now scatter
like bears from the dump at dawn
& drop their own one-patch versions
of yr piecemeal visions

yr. material jazz
silenter

Monday, May 12, 2008

odd job

Somewhere,in character,Humphrey Bogart said something like "You're not one of those characters are you?" & smiled such a disagreeable smile

We've probably all known some 'characters' off the silver screen. Not just
the truly individualistic,unique ones that do sparkle up the heap of our own friends and our own families,But there are those who climb higher on the "watch me,Now" soapbox for a shout in the park. Society's characters,acting out their parts.
There was this old guy, back 35 yrs. when I was in school,this old guy always in the keystone cop outfit, who was glaringly obvious in the mix of very young college students. The badbearded glassyeyed guy never said much,
likely because he was higher & drunker than the rest of us at any given time. Some of us used to imagine him persistant & lucky enough to bed some of the sillier,high & drunker girls, the last standing at the latest of nights. He went by "Buster" I think.
he seemed like an ancient unsympathetic drunken fuck to me.
I'm probably older..than he was,
tonight.
From Mt. Pleasant I went on to live in Ann Arbor. Most any alumni of U of M. from the 70's knew who the character Shakey Jake was; an indiscriminately aged black man..on any corner,armed w/his stringed instrument,working it some & trying to accompany it some.He was early chuck berryish;zoot suited pinks,whites,& Blacks. Wore baggy checks,jacket, & two-toned shoes. and a bad lid.
He was usually with a nod,toothy smile , and a hey.
probably Also got invites to party..and maybe more from the ladies.
funny how being odd can help getting creature comforts met.
for me, subtlety always trumps blatancy
like rod stewart mostly metaphored almost forty years before
"I combed my hair a thousand ways,but it came out lookin just the same"